Slashdot Mirror

anonymous writes "In this fascinating interview, Eric Laffoon and Andras Mantia give us a glimpse into the world of the Quanta Plus project. Read on for everything from tantalising references to Kommander, billed by Eric to be part of the foundations for the next generation desktop and user experience, to details of future plans for Quanta VPL (Visual Page Layout)."

TheMadPenguin writes "MadPenguin.org announces today its TykeLinux (current working title) project, a Linux distro geared toward child development and learning. The distribution will be based and built upon Ark Linux 1.0a7.1 and the KDE 3.1.x desktop environment. It will include several educational tools, as well as cross-platform compatible office applications. If you are an interested software developer, please read the full announcement and get on board :)"

An anonymous reader writes "George Staikos responds to Michael Meeks' arguments of using GNOME over Qt. There is also a discussion of events at KDE.News. In Meeks' same set of slides, he states that Ximian OpenOffice is much faster to start than native OpenOffice."

An anonymous reader writes "George Staikos responds to Michael Meeks' arguments of using GNOME over Qt. There is also a discussion of events at KDE.News. In Meeks' same set of slides, he states that Ximian OpenOffice is much faster to start than native OpenOffice."

Slashback with more on Linux telephony, Mailblocks' terms of service, the scary disease known as SARS, the status of civilian GPS accuracy and more -- read on for the details.

A good oversight to correct. AndyMan! writes "Regarding yesterdays 'Building A Better Inbox,' I got the following email from support@mailblocks.com:

"'Our apologies, we picked up an old version of our TOS when we went live. We will NOT be allowing 3rd parties to send unsolicited email to our userbase. Please check the site this evening for the updated and correct TOS. We apologize for any confusion or inconvenience.'"

All the government you pay for. dunng808 writes "Despite frequent speculation to the contrary, Security Enhanced Linux is alive and well. Government Executive Magazine has a report from a conference on open-source software at which Peter Loscocco, a senior NSA scientist, revealed that the agency has continued to work on SE Linux despite efforts by Microsoft and the Initiative for Software Choice. "We spent a lot of time educating our managers, who accepted a lot of the flack that has come back to NSA about SE Linux," Loscocco said. For those readers trying to win acceptance of open-source software in the workplace, what effort have you undertaken to educate management, and what has worked?"

Also safe for now is GPS. As an anonymous reader writes, "Following last week's thread on GPS, and the possibility that the Pentagon might goof around with the civilian signal, Forbes checks in with the folks in charge and finds we have nothing to worry about."

OK, both of these things involve series of coherent vibrations in air ... A few months back, we mentioned that TheKompany was selling software to let Zaurus owners use Net2Phone for telephone service, and that they were working on a desktop version as well. Well, now it's ready. HeUnique writes "TheKompany just released tkcphone for the Linux desktop. This is the first product which lets Linux users to use their existing net2phone accounts to talk either through net2phone to net2phone or net2phone to standard POTS phone with the best audio quality (G.729 codec)."

And in almost-but-not-totally-unrelated news, jackjumper writes "Shawn Gordon of The Kompany fame has started his own record label, ProgRock Records. From the interview at Linux and Main: "The idea...is to provide progressive rock music to listeners at a low price while allowing more of that money to find its way to the artists' pockets than happens with conventional recording contracts and at the same time making a gesture -- you know the one -- to the established recording cartel." This sounds really cool."

A deadly pathogen by any other name. waytoomuchcoffee writes "The leading hypothesis for what is causing Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) is now thought to be a coronavirus, one of the virii that can cause the common cold. The New York Times (archive version for those non-members) has a story here. The global toll is now more than 750 stricken and 22 dead. Singapore is quarantining hundreds of people in an effort to stop the outbreak, while the head of the city's hospitals has taken ill with symptoms consistent with SARS. Both the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization have pages up now, which include FAQs and progression information."

How many times do we have to go over this? Vajsvarana writes "The major free Desktop Environment GNOME and KDE has released a common open statement on recent XFree86 troubles. 'Innovation should happen in the open, with all affected parties able to participate early in the process' seems a clear and strong request to XFree86 people."

An anonymous reader submits "Competing infrastructures may foster improvement in each desktop, but the Gnome and KDE hackers still know how to work together when needed. The Free *nix desktop has been improving quickly. Red Hat's unified desktop was controversial, but obviously the right decision for regular users. Now that KDE and Gnome have decided to combine their Human Interface Guides, it can be done right--by the developers themselves. Note: they also want to involve 'people working on other non-KDE non-GNOME HIGs.'" Update: 02/03 20:19 GMT by T : Apparently not everyone's browser can read http://freedesktop.org, so the initial link up there now sports a "www" as well. And it's .org -- sorry.

Ashcrow writes "KDE 3.1 was released early this morning and boasts new usability enhancements, VNC-compatible desktop sharing, tabbed browsing, and a new download manager, among other enhancements. You can read the release anouncement here and start downloading from the closest mirror. Kudos to the KDE Team!"

Ashcrow writes "KDE 3.1 was released early this morning and boasts new usability enhancements, VNC-compatible desktop sharing, tabbed browsing, and a new download manager, among other enhancements. You can read the release anouncement here and start downloading from the closest mirror. Kudos to the KDE Team!"

Ashcrow writes "KDE 3.1 was released early this morning and boasts new usability enhancements, VNC-compatible desktop sharing, tabbed browsing, and a new download manager, among other enhancements. You can read the release anouncement here and start downloading from the closest mirror. Kudos to the KDE Team!"

Ashcrow writes "KDE 3.1 was released early this morning and boasts new usability enhancements, VNC-compatible desktop sharing, tabbed browsing, and a new download manager, among other enhancements. You can read the release anouncement here and start downloading from the closest mirror. Kudos to the KDE Team!"

Ashcrow writes "KDE 3.1 was released early this morning and boasts new usability enhancements, VNC-compatible desktop sharing, tabbed browsing, and a new download manager, among other enhancements. You can read the release anouncement here and start downloading from the closest mirror. Kudos to the KDE Team!"

Ashcrow writes "KDE 3.1 was released early this morning and boasts new usability enhancements, VNC-compatible desktop sharing, tabbed browsing, and a new download manager, among other enhancements. You can read the release anouncement here and start downloading from the closest mirror. Kudos to the KDE Team!"

Ashcrow writes "KDE 3.1 was released early this morning and boasts new usability enhancements, VNC-compatible desktop sharing, tabbed browsing, and a new download manager, among other enhancements. You can read the release anouncement here and start downloading from the closest mirror. Kudos to the KDE Team!"

Ashcrow writes "KDE 3.1 was released early this morning and boasts new usability enhancements, VNC-compatible desktop sharing, tabbed browsing, and a new download manager, among other enhancements. You can read the release anouncement here and start downloading from the closest mirror. Kudos to the KDE Team!"

sultanoslack writes "In an effort to bring together KDE hackers that are students, unemployed or by other means lacking in hardware and capital with users in that have spare goodies, Adopt-a-Geek has been launched. More details are available on how to help out. Been wondering what you can do to help out? Here's your chance!"

sultanoslack writes "In an effort to bring together KDE hackers that are students, unemployed or by other means lacking in hardware and capital with users in that have spare goodies, Adopt-a-Geek has been launched. More details are available on how to help out. Been wondering what you can do to help out? Here's your chance!"

arb writes "The Age has an interview with Shawn Gordon, president of theKompany.com where he discusses such issues as RedHat's focus on Gnome and the relegation of KDE 'to second best', other Gnome vs KDE issues, distributions including proprietary bits and so on."

e8johan writes "The KDevelop team has released the final alpha of KDevelop 3.0 (a.k.a. Gideon) has been released. This third generation of KDevelop looks really promising as it features plug-in editors, many wizards (even for Kicker apps, KControl modules and KIOSlaves). Some of the features that I like best are the support for cross compilation and support for more languages than C/C++. Screenshots are here, more info here, dot.kde article here!"

e8johan writes "The KDevelop team has released the final alpha of KDevelop 3.0 (a.k.a. Gideon) has been released. This third generation of KDevelop looks really promising as it features plug-in editors, many wizards (even for Kicker apps, KControl modules and KIOSlaves). Some of the features that I like best are the support for cross compilation and support for more languages than C/C++. Screenshots are here, more info here, dot.kde article here!"

Apple CEO Steve Jobs once again introduced the new PowerBooks new and upgraded software to a throng of adoring fans at the annual Macworld Expo San Francisco, including a new web browser, new versions of the "iLife" applications (iPhoto, iMovie, and iDVD), and presentation software (which Steve himself has been "beta testing" at every Macworld keynote since 2002). The PowerBook has been extended in two directions, with screens up to 17" and down to 12". Both feature a new material for the casing, aluminum (anodized, not painted), with AirPort antennas in the screen. The AirPort range of the PowerBook now equals the iBook. It will no longer boot into Mac OS, only into Mac OS X.

The 17" model is 1440x900 resolution, 16:10 aspect ratio, G4/1GHz, SuperDrive, GeForce4 440 Go/64MB, and all the same ports, with the addition of line in and FireWire 800 (in addition to FireWire 400). It is less than 1" thin, and 6.8 lbs., and has fiber-optic lightning for the keyboard activated by ambient light sensors. It will be available next month for $3,300.

The 12" version is 4.6 lbs., and is smaller than the iBook in every dimension. It's 1024x768, G4/867, GeForce4 420 Go/32MB, and is AirPort-ready ($99 extra). It is $1,800 for a combo drive model, $2,000 for a SuperDrive model, and will be available in two weeks.

Both models sport the new AirPort Extreme (802.11g), which is 54Mbps, up from the 11Mbps of AirPort (802.11b). The base stations and clients are fully compatible with the old AirPort, handle 50 users, and support both wireless bridging (to extend the range by adding more stations) and can act as a USB printer server.

Jobs also introduced Safari, a new Mac OS X browser based on the KHTML rendering engine from KDE (and Apple will publish changes they've made to it). There's nothing especially great about it -- it's a web browser -- except that, unlike most other browsers, it is expected to be fast and work properly, as well as be fully integrated into Mac OS X. The web is a killer app, but pretty much all web browsers suck; Apple hopes to give us something that doesn't suck in Safari. It is a free download for the beta, starting today. This story was posted using Safari. W00p.

iPhoto 2 has been revamped, with iTunes integration (access to playlists, tracks, even searching) for slide shows; one-click enhance of photos; a retouch brush; archiving to CD/DVD; and more. iMovie 3 has added chapters, the "Ken Burns Effect" (panning through still images), and precise audio editing. iDVD 3 has added a ton of quite cool themes, which will look great the first few times you see them.

They are -- along with iTunes -- bundled with all new Macs beginning January 25 as "iLife". All but iDVD will be freely available online, contrary to previously published reports. The entire bundle of four apps will be available for retail purchase for $50.

For sale today at $99 is another new app, Keynote, which is the presentation software Jobs has been using for over a year for his own presentations. It includes all sorts of flashy features like textures and Quartz-powered 3D transitions, and can import and export PowerPoint, as well as export to PDF and QuickTime. It has an open file format (using XML).

Jobs also introduced Final Cut Express, a stripped-down version of Final Cut Pro, for $300, and noted other prominent third-party software recently released for Mac OS X: QuickBooks, Director, and DigiDesign Pro Tools (later this month). He noted that the number of native apps for Mac OS X jumped from 2,000 to 5,000 in 2002.

Meanwhile, the number of users of the OS went from 1.2 million to 5 million last year, and he expects the number to jump to 9 or 10 million in 2003.

Update: 01/07 19:37 GMT by Jamie (also posted with Safari): And thanks to the several Slashdot readers who pointed out a great but unannounced product: X11 (aka the X Windows System) for Mac OS X. It's in Public Beta right now. Great to see this, an Apple-supported X is greatly needed. I don't know why Jobs didn't at least mention this, it would have gotten quite the round of applause I'm sure.

Michael Cray asks: "I'm an MIS student and a pro-Linux / Open Source guy. I've been trying to find an article, that serves as an introduction to Open Source, which my Professor could use in class. To me, Open Source is more philosophical than technical. Since this is an IDS/MIS course called 'Management of Information Systems', the professor picks articles from journals like the Harvard Review to be used in class. So if you are a teacher, what article would you use to present 'open source' in a college class room?" What articles have you found that would serve as a good introduction to Open Source? Documents like The Cathedral and the Bazaar and the GPL would be good intro pieces, but are there other pieces that might flesh out these two as an introduction to Open Source?

woobieman29 writes "KDE.news reported on Saturday that the KDE 3.1 release that was scheduled for this week has been delayed until early January. This is happening due to some security concerns that have arisen during a security audit of the 3.1 CVS tree. Kudos to the KDE team for making sure that the product is fully baked before release.!"

woobieman29 writes "KDE.news reported on Saturday that the KDE 3.1 release that was scheduled for this week has been delayed until early January. This is happening due to some security concerns that have arisen during a security audit of the 3.1 CVS tree. Kudos to the KDE team for making sure that the product is fully baked before release.!"

Paladin128 writes "The KDE Project today issued two security advisories which affect KDE versions 2.1 through KDE 3.0.4 (and also through KDE 3.1 RC3). The first advisory concerns the rlogin:// service and, for affected KDE 2.x systems, the telnet:// service. The second advisory concerns the LISa and resLISa network browsing applications. Binary packages for KDE 3.0.5 should be available by early next week (check the KDE 3.0.5 Info Page); in the interim it is recommended to disable the affected services or upgrade from the source code or patches. Read more here."

krog asks: "I've recently signed a contract with a local middle school to replace their aged Apple /// cluster with a roomful of IBM Aptivas running Linux 7.3. Now surely I will be installing such ease-of-use tools as KDE3, Gnome, and screen, but I am looking for suggestions of other software to install. Anyone know of any good text editors/BASIC interpreters/shells/etc suitable for eight-year-old children?"

Gentu writes "Great news from our favorite windowing system: [Hewlett-Packard] engineers committed a new extension to XFree86, called RandR. XFree86 4.3 (to be released in late 2002/early 2003), will have the ability to truly resize (not via the pseudo-resize CNTRL+[+/-] command), rotate, reflect and change the refresh rate of each screen of an X display on the fly. And KDE seems to be the first desktop environment to add support for the RandR extension."

Moritz Moeller - Her writes "As most of you desktop users already know, the KDE Project recently released KDE 3.1beta2, which will be the final development release before KDE 3.1. The good news is, KDE 3.1 is scheduled for release in just a few weeks. The following page gives a nice overview about what is coming with many screenshots. It will certainly be the best KDE ever."

An anonymous reader writes "Timothy Butler published a nice clean-up on the misinformations that were published by dep on Linux and Main. Most of what that has been alleged by Linux and Main turns out to be wrong. Especially, the KDE League has no obligation to disclose financial information. On dot.kde.org, Mathias Kalle Dallheimer, KDE e.V. president, explains that the KDE e.V would authorize the KDE League to disclose its books to the KDE e.V members. However, the KDE e.V is not the only member of the KDE League. Other members would have to approve this."

An anonymous reader writes "The corporate status of the KDE League, Inc., was revoked earlier this year by the Delaware Secretary of State when it failed to file necessary papers and pay fees, according to this report in Linux and Main. In addition, the organization seems to have overlooked financial disclosures that are supposed to be made public under federal law. And asked about it, the KDE League's chairman, Andreas Pour, refused to comment." Update: You can read a statement from Andreas here that explains what's going on. Thanks to Thomas Zander for the update.

desau writes "The good folks over at KDE have released the second beta of 3.1. Binary packages are available for most major distributions, save one."

desau writes "The good folks over at KDE have released the second beta of 3.1. Binary packages are available for most major distributions, save one."

Vicegrip writes "In an article on leaked release notes on Redhat 8.0 CNet also revealed that Bernhard Rosenkraenzer, known here on Slashdot as berorh, has quit over objections he has on what Redhat is doing to KDE in the new release. Bero says that the new version of KDE in Redhat 8.0 is going to be crippleware. I know I always found Bero's comments here on Slashdot helpful and insightful. His worries about what Redhat is doing to KDE for 8.0 have me rather concerned and thinking of switching distributions."

e8johan writes "The KDE PIM Team will integrate all their applications into one common interface and create an Outlook-like application.This is being done in the Kroupware project commissioned by the German government. There is a prototype of KOrganizer with KMain embedded into it (shots 1, 2), and another prototype with KMain running as a KPart in Kaplan (shot 1, 2, 3). This looks hopeful and if they manage to build the application as flexible and modular as other KDE projects this will hopefully mature into something great." Kroupware is a catchy name, but I wonder if the KDE team is aware of the English word croup.

e8johan writes "The KDE PIM Team will integrate all their applications into one common interface and create an Outlook-like application.This is being done in the Kroupware project commissioned by the German government. There is a prototype of KOrganizer with KMain embedded into it (shots 1, 2), and another prototype with KMain running as a KPart in Kaplan (shot 1, 2, 3). This looks hopeful and if they manage to build the application as flexible and modular as other KDE projects this will hopefully mature into something great." Kroupware is a catchy name, but I wonder if the KDE team is aware of the English word croup.

e8johan writes "The KDE PIM Team will integrate all their applications into one common interface and create an Outlook-like application.This is being done in the Kroupware project commissioned by the German government. There is a prototype of KOrganizer with KMain embedded into it (shots 1, 2), and another prototype with KMain running as a KPart in Kaplan (shot 1, 2, 3). This looks hopeful and if they manage to build the application as flexible and modular as other KDE projects this will hopefully mature into something great." Kroupware is a catchy name, but I wonder if the KDE team is aware of the English word croup.

AxelTorvalds writes "The Mozilla 1.1 RPMs in Mandrake 9.0 contain the enigmail plugin. It seemlessly encrypts, signs, decrypts and authenticate email with GPG or PGP in the Mozilla Mail client. This is the first major distributor I know of to support enigmail. With this and Evolution and Kmail both supporting GPG and PGP are we at the dawn of that golden age when encrypted email will be commonplace?" Update: 09/15 17:26 GMT by T : Borked link fixed.

tankengine writes "The German government has ordered a full-blown open-source groupware solution for KDE, to be delivered by the end of this year. It will consist of a server made of standard OSS components (Apache, Postfix, LDAP, etc) called Kolab, and a KDE client. The contractors are aiming for functional equivalence to MS Exchange and Outlook 2000."

minkwe writes "Tension is currently rising between the KDE and GNOME followers, following the release of the new beta to Red Hat's upcoming distribution. Neither group appears to be satisfied with the fact that Red Hat has null-ified the difference between the two desktop environments."

minkwe writes "Tension is currently rising between the KDE and GNOME followers, following the release of the new beta to Red Hat's upcoming distribution. Neither group appears to be satisfied with the fact that Red Hat has null-ified the difference between the two desktop environments."

shadow303 writes "KDE 3.1 beta has been released. There are numerous improvements, including tabbed browsing with Konqueror." I still can't say I care for tabbed browsing, but a lot of people swear by it. The new style/theme looks quite excellent, as do the various improved dialog boxes.

friedmud writes "I just read a great interview over at OPEN for Business. It is with KDE contributor Andreas Pour. He goes over many topics - not only including KDE. My favorite part: 'they are basically saying, if you stop obeying us, we will stop you from viewing the documents you and your friends created. Who are they to say where and when I read my documents? Now I need a monopolist's permission to view my own creations? The audacity is mind-boggling, and that the Justice Department is permitting it is simply astounding.' - Wow"

redcliffe asks: "Sometimes it's much easier to create a spreadsheet to do some mathematical calculations for physics than to create a whole new program to do the calculations. It's also handy to be able to easily change one figure and have all your other calculations update. But there a certain types of calculations that normal spreadsheet apps like KSpread don't seem to handle well. Anyone know of a spreadsheet or something similiar designed for scientific computing? I've seen GNU Octave, but that's almost like writing a whole program, and without a GUI it's hard to learn quickly."

Anonymous Lazy Boy writes "Yesterday saw the official release of Valgrind 1.0.0. Valgrind is a C/C++ programmer's dream come true: effortless memory allocation checking, uninitialized memory access, leaks etc. Purify for Linux has arrived, only better: contrary to its commercial (non-Linux) sibling, checking is performed directly on the executable, no re-linking necessary. The technology behind Valgrind is highly fascinating and explained down to the very gory details in the documentation."

Anonymous Lazy Boy writes "Yesterday saw the official release of Valgrind 1.0.0. Valgrind is a C/C++ programmer's dream come true: effortless memory allocation checking, uninitialized memory access, leaks etc. Purify for Linux has arrived, only better: contrary to its commercial (non-Linux) sibling, checking is performed directly on the executable, no re-linking necessary. The technology behind Valgrind is highly fascinating and explained down to the very gory details in the documentation."

Philippe Fremy writes: "I have just published and translated into English a comparison between Qt programming and MFC programming, which was written by Pascal Audoux (a fellow coworker). I am interested in feedback and would love to add quotes from developers that have used both toolkits." Here is the English version ("Qt vs MFC") as well as the French one ("Qt contre MFC").

Slashback tonight (read on below) has updates on next-generation aircraft, KDE user-interface improvements and suggestions, a special warning for those obsessed with Milton's stapler from Office Space, SmartFilter's attitude toward SourceForge, and more.

You've got to admit it's getting better all the time. Gentu writes: "In parallel to the KDE 3.1-alpha release today, OSNews published an interesting article discussing a number of User Interface issues found on KDE 3. The article suggests a number of changes, some small, some pretty drastic. Towards the end of the two-part article, the author discusses the 'integration' problem found in today's X11 desktop environments, and how fixing this issue would bring Unix closer to average Joe's desktop."

Yes, you're allowed to have more than one friend. A NuKeFaN writes: "Following the article titled Are you a Friend of GNOME I wanted to point you out that the most used GPL'd software for the Web, PHP-Nuke, also has a similar page/system for their friends. It's a Club (MandrakeClub like) where you can be a member for a little monthly fee and you can get some extra benefits. You can access the Club area to know more about it. This can be, maybe, another example of how to get some money to fund a free software project, the matter is if we, as users, will support those project's developers this way? I think we can."

Wait, the scam was to take just a few pennies from everyone! MrBlue VT writes "In reference to the previous Slashdot article about the red Swingline Staplers, I click on the add to cart button on the Swingline website, and it pops open an ordering window with a 4 staplers added to the shopping cart. Ok, I think it's a little strange, but change the quantity back to 1, and hit continue to checkout. Next thing I know, I'm looking at an order form with all the text boxes filled out with somebody else's personal information. He's from Bellvue, WA apparently (I'm in Virginia). It also has his credit card number and expiration date!

This has to be the worst security I've ever seen in an online shopping site. The company who apparently provides the online shopping service for Swingline appears to be an outfit called SureSource.

I just wanted to let anyone who happened to order from them know about this. Your credit card info could very well be compromised."

Please fasten your belts. hondo77 submitted this follow-up to this article about next-generation aircraft, writing "Boeing says that their blended-wing aircraft will be ready for test flights in 2006. The article also has a picture of a 3% scale model. See, it doesn't look like the B-2 at all."

But thanks anyhow. flonker writes "Smartfilter no longer lists sourceforge.net! Link for those who want to see for themselves."

Great at stealing them, too. MrDingusMcGee writes "After the recent posting about a study suggesting that video games decrease brain activity, I thought it would be interesting to read the results of another study which has shown that video game players score better on a range of attention tasks (mirror here)done by Shawn Green at the University of Rochester Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department, and that this could possibly rate video game players as better drivers. Worth seeing the other side of the argument and having some validation for those hours of gaming."

navindra writes: "A brand new alpha of the breath-taking KDE 3.1 development branch has been announced. This release sports everything from wonderful new eye candy to tons of popular new features including new and exciting "easter eggs" (aka bugs) just waiting to be discovered. Remember, this is not a stable release -- those of you concerned with stability should use KDE 3.0.2, whereas those of you who want to help KDE 3.1 be the best KDE ever should use this alpha. Kudos to Dre for writing the announcement and to the tireless Dirk Mueller for coordinating this release. Party!" On a related note, pAlpha writes: "Over the past years a large amount of myths has built up around KDE. Recently Aaron J. Seigo released a page about the KDE myths and facts." Good for convincing the boss.

navindra writes: "A brand new alpha of the breath-taking KDE 3.1 development branch has been announced. This release sports everything from wonderful new eye candy to tons of popular new features including new and exciting "easter eggs" (aka bugs) just waiting to be discovered. Remember, this is not a stable release -- those of you concerned with stability should use KDE 3.0.2, whereas those of you who want to help KDE 3.1 be the best KDE ever should use this alpha. Kudos to Dre for writing the announcement and to the tireless Dirk Mueller for coordinating this release. Party!" On a related note, pAlpha writes: "Over the past years a large amount of myths has built up around KDE. Recently Aaron J. Seigo released a page about the KDE myths and facts." Good for convincing the boss.

navindra writes: "A brand new alpha of the breath-taking KDE 3.1 development branch has been announced. This release sports everything from wonderful new eye candy to tons of popular new features including new and exciting "easter eggs" (aka bugs) just waiting to be discovered. Remember, this is not a stable release -- those of you concerned with stability should use KDE 3.0.2, whereas those of you who want to help KDE 3.1 be the best KDE ever should use this alpha. Kudos to Dre for writing the announcement and to the tireless Dirk Mueller for coordinating this release. Party!" On a related note, pAlpha writes: "Over the past years a large amount of myths has built up around KDE. Recently Aaron J. Seigo released a page about the KDE myths and facts." Good for convincing the boss.

navindra writes: "A brand new alpha of the breath-taking KDE 3.1 development branch has been announced. This release sports everything from wonderful new eye candy to tons of popular new features including new and exciting "easter eggs" (aka bugs) just waiting to be discovered. Remember, this is not a stable release -- those of you concerned with stability should use KDE 3.0.2, whereas those of you who want to help KDE 3.1 be the best KDE ever should use this alpha. Kudos to Dre for writing the announcement and to the tireless Dirk Mueller for coordinating this release. Party!" On a related note, pAlpha writes: "Over the past years a large amount of myths has built up around KDE. Recently Aaron J. Seigo released a page about the KDE myths and facts." Good for convincing the boss.